#127: Risk the $600K in His Home or Play it Safe?

Speaker 1 You can't have her high society desires overcome what your income is, right? Because you guys are being held back by this 600K that you have in this house. We're being house poor.
Yes.

Speaker 1 Well, and I always said I would never be house poor, but we weren't, right? We were doing fine. Now I am house poor because the house is the expensive part.

Speaker 1 My name is Seth Shaner. I'm 48 years old.
I live in Orange County, California, and I sell restaurant businesses. And tune into this episode of Next Level Pros.

Speaker 1 So Seth, man,

Speaker 1 it's been a while since we've chatted. It's been a long time.
Yeah. So you and I, we were neighbors back in the day.
Yep.

Speaker 1 When I bought my first house at the age of 24, I was older than you, but that was my, I think that was the first house I bought as well. Okay.
Cool. Cool.
You've been up to.

Speaker 1 A lot of things have changed. Yeah.
Cool. So tell us about what you got going on right now.

Speaker 1 You're in the restaurant industry. You're selling restaurants.
Yeah, give us a little more detail. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 After, you know, it's funny because the year that we were 2008, my business I had a business that went under. So I was, you know, really like, what am I going to do?

Speaker 1 And it was pretty rough actually for the next eight years.

Speaker 1 I had I owed a lot of money. It was about a million bucks.
And so I ended up negotiating all that and paying it off over the next eight years instead of filing bankruptcy.

Speaker 1 I know you know you talked about that in your story. Right.

Speaker 1 And but I said, I told my wife at the time, I said,

Speaker 1 Where do you want to go? Because we should go, we need to go somewhere else, a bigger market. And she said, Orange County.
So we. Is she originally from there? No, she's from Utah.

Speaker 1 What took you to Orange County? You like just sounded nice? Apparently, on our first date, we talked about this. And I don't remember the conversation.

Speaker 1 You know, kind of a guy thing, I guess. But we talked about where we both want to live.
Our number one place was Orange County. Just weather and lifestyle.

Speaker 2 The weather is nice. Yeah, sure.

Speaker 1 We're going to have to talk a little bit more about Orange County because I know

Speaker 1 you're kind of in a dichotomy right now, right? Like you're trying to make money. Yep.

Speaker 1 In one of the most expensive places. That's kind of part of the issue.

Speaker 1 That said, sometimes I think

Speaker 1 being in proximity to people

Speaker 1 and situation, you know, can be helpful too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So there are a lot of people around me that are very successful and that can be helpful as well. And the brokerage I'm with is in Newport Beach.

Speaker 1 So anyway, fast forward. So we moved to Orange County, but part of that was then I got a job with GE Capital franchise finance.
So I started selling debt.

Speaker 1 So I was selling loans to restaurant franchisees all over the country. It turns out I was really good at that

Speaker 1 and took me back to, you know, I did a two-year Mormon mission. back in the day and I was really good at that.
And so the sales thing for me has been a theme, but I kind of kept ignoring it.

Speaker 1 And so when I was at GE Capital, things went really well. The problem is at the end of the day, the GE end up selling all of GE Capital.

Speaker 1 And so we all got sold and laid offs. And, you know, I did a couple things.
I started a business. I went to another bank for a while and ended up getting hired by,

Speaker 1 I was going to do this same thing I'm doing now, selling businesses in 2019.

Speaker 1 But the same week, I had an offer to go run a big restaurant company from one of my customers from GE Capitals. And this is 127 Denny's.

Speaker 1 And they just make it, they had 33, bought 94, made a big organization. This is 4,000 employees, 200 million revenue.
And I took over as president six weeks before the pandemic hit.

Speaker 1 So this is my first time running restaurants. But, you know, the reason I took that job over the brokerage job is I thought, this is the only time I can always go back to do a brokerage.

Speaker 1 I'm not going to go in as the president of a company this big.

Speaker 1 You know, it's not going to happen very often. Yeah.
So I felt like that was a unique opportunity to be able to get even deeper, learn more about my industry.

Speaker 1 So then I have the finance side and now I have operations. So let me let me just like wrap this all together.
So you owned a business back in LA. Was that the first business you ever owned? Yeah.
Yep.

Speaker 1 And that sailed. That was, yeah, that was construction related.
It was a yeah.

Speaker 1 And then since then, you've operated as like a high-level either executive, consultant, I mean, basically a high-level employee for the last north of a decade.

Speaker 1 I did start one other business in 2017, then I sold in 2020. Okay.
And that one was so the first one was a failure. That one did well.
It succeeded. I sold it.
You know, it wasn't.

Speaker 1 How much did you sell it for? It was like 800 grand. Okay.
It wasn't a big deal.

Speaker 1 Did you net 800 on that?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 maybe half that. Okay.

Speaker 1 But, you know, we I

Speaker 1 there was a messy, I had a partner who really tried to take the company. I bought him out using debt, and then he tried to take the company down after that.
Broke every agreement.

Speaker 1 You know, it is tough, and that really kind of hurt. So, I mean, you've had essentially a couple messy experiences.

Speaker 1 I mean, obviously, you sold the second business, which is good, but sold it, but really didn't. But even that was a little messy.
It was actually, yeah, pretty messy.

Speaker 1 Because I had a partner who was a bad person. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I recognized that because, you know, at the time, he's telling me all the right things, but my gut told me this is not someone you want to do business with.

Speaker 1 And so, you know, I read your bio. You wrote a whole lot more than I ever knew about you.

Speaker 1 Like, we were next-door neighbors and attended the same church and everything else. And, like, I didn't know half the stuff that you wrote in here, which is, which is interesting.

Speaker 1 So, like, I mean, you've got,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 obviously there's a lot of reasons why you should play small, right? Like the way you were raised, your parents were, you know, not into the entrepreneurial scene whatsoever.

Speaker 1 Well, they tried, and when I was 14, they were bankrupt. I mean, they failed.
I don't even know if I said that. And what I mean is, like,

Speaker 1 you've seen a lot of examples of failure regarding entrepreneurship. And so you really have every reason to be a little scared of it, right?

Speaker 1 Well, and not only that, when I was growing up, my dad made a book. He read this in another book or something.
And I remember being a teenager. we were living,

Speaker 1 my parents were bankrupt when I was 14. We moved to this small town in Illinois where they grew up.
And

Speaker 1 the house is $28,000 with a half acre. I mean, it was run down.

Speaker 1 Anyway, and my dad at that time could not get a job. And he made this book, The Many, you know, called The Many Failures of Steve L.W.
Shannon. Yeah, I read that title.
I was like, what?

Speaker 1 He wrote a book about just like how he sucks. He just put it all in here.
And

Speaker 1 love look i love my parents because they've always been super supportive like they're always like you can do anything yeah i just have never had i never had the example of it do you know what i mean yeah and so i think it was hard for me to put together it's like it's like if you've never been to mars and now you're trying to navigate like where do i go so what do you think is the biggest thing that's held you back has it been

Speaker 1 that has it been your

Speaker 1 because i mean you've you've been through a lot just reading up right like

Speaker 1 family uh was was pretty unsuccessful financially growing up. Yeah, financially.
Right. Financially.

Speaker 1 You know, you had to provide a lot for yourself. Your first business failed.
Your second business, you were able to sell.

Speaker 1 You've gone through a divorce and a few things. Like, what do you think the main thing that's kept you from going and achieving the big dream?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think I've thought about this a lot. Yeah.
Because

Speaker 1 I've been digging this into this with just myself, right? Trying to understand this for the last kind of year or two.

Speaker 1 And I think part of that was I had this concept of, you know, being conservative. And some of that for me came from, I felt like my religion.

Speaker 1 I think it also came from, you know, I was married to someone who's an amazing person. I'll never say a negative word, but not

Speaker 1 my person and not

Speaker 1 doesn't like that.

Speaker 1 She wants stability, you know, nine to five, just no risk. Salary, zero risk.
And it's hard. I think it's hard to be

Speaker 1 an entrepreneur. Zero perceived risk.
Zero perceived risk. Percy risk.
Right. Right.

Speaker 1 Because obviously there was a lot of risk with what you were doing, getting laid off with some of these big corporate jobs and everything like that. Yeah.
Yeah. I've been laid off of a bunch of them.

Speaker 1 But I understand. I'm fired.
I was laid off. I mean, so it was something with that company that caused a change.
Yeah, because I think that's important for anybody watching this thing.

Speaker 1 Like, if you have a job right now and you're considering becoming an entrepreneur, like realize that risk doesn't only land on the side of entrepreneurship. Correct.

Speaker 1 There's a lot of risk associated with being an employee.

Speaker 2 The perceived risk that we're taught, right, is if you work for somebody, you have a job. That's stability.
You can't get a house loan if you're an entrepreneur because,

Speaker 2 you know, and make $100,000 because of your deductions and stuff. But if you're W-2,

Speaker 2 it's just the society set up to support or favor jobs as something that's stable when in reality we know a job can be gone just as fast as anything.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it's really set up for us to not take risks. Yes.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 let's just call it spade a speed. Your wife held you back from taking risks, right? I held me back, but I chose to

Speaker 1 the relationship that overlaps. Yeah.
And so I just don't, you know.

Speaker 1 And so now, you know, it was very freeing when I said, you know what, I need to to move a different direction. It was really, a really hard decision.

Speaker 1 I mean, because we also, you know, we're married a long time and we have three kids, and I love them all. So it's not about that.
It's about, you know, at some point, you got to be who you need to be.

Speaker 1 And that was a hard decision for me. Do you feel like anything's holding you back right now?

Speaker 1 Me, yes. What's holding you back right now? What are your biggest fears that are keeping you from being the

Speaker 1 cessioner that can be?

Speaker 1 Well, so one of them, you know, so then then when I left my job early 23, okay, so

Speaker 1 I thought my thing was going to be to go acquire some of these smaller restaurant chains. So five to ten store.
I had four deals last year that I was trying to close.

Speaker 1 And it wasn't a lack of capital or financing. It was

Speaker 1 each one had a situation that I couldn't really control.

Speaker 1 One of them, the cash flow kept going down, the price kept changing. Two of them, they just at the last minute said, oh, I don't want to sell.
You know, changed their mind.

Speaker 1 So I thought that was my path. So part of it has been

Speaker 1 what kind of entrepreneur should I be? Right. And so I started out doing that.
And I spent a lot of time, you know, legal costs, travel, you know what I mean? You've done it.

Speaker 1 I mean, trying to do deals. Yeah.
And they didn't work out. Right.

Speaker 1 And so by the beginning of this year, when the last, like the fourth one didn't work out, I was like, okay, this brokerage had approached me and I'm like, you know what?

Speaker 1 I'm good at selling i know i can do that

Speaker 1 but what i didn't want to do is have to go kill all the time you know like you you kill you know you like what you kill um

Speaker 1 but then i'm like well i can always do something on the second you know like so let's let's lay some groundwork here so

Speaker 1 let's talk about your personal finances right like how are you making money right now Because I know I know you're you're trying to close these deals right with with brokering restaurants, restaurants, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, so now I'm... That's correct.
Yeah, now. Yep.
And I'm sure you're paying bills.

Speaker 1 Well, and it's tough because now I'm doing consulting to pay the bills. What does that mean? What does consulting mean? Yeah, it means like kind of.
A lot of definitions out there.

Speaker 1 There are. And really helping restaurant owners to make more money.
So you're going in, you're signing contracts to work with these guys for six months. Yeah.
Just be there like sounding bored.

Speaker 1 Why, very specific things. Very specific.
So I can look at a set of financials and I can say, look, I can save you a million bucks, however much it is. For sure.

Speaker 1 And then I know exactly where to do it. How much money are you making doing that right now?

Speaker 1 Not as much as I can. How much are you making money?

Speaker 1 Right now,

Speaker 1 I'm turning over clients. So I just have a new client that just signed on Friday for four grand.

Speaker 1 Four grand a month? A month. Okay.
I have another one that

Speaker 1 they were calling me this morning. I think they'll be in like another six grand a month.

Speaker 1 Okay, so if I understand your situation, you're divorced from your wife but you're now living back in the same home almost like yeah i have a kid

Speaker 1 in the garage type deal right yeah i have a little mother-in-law apartment type deal yep okay so you're with your kids is your wife or ex-wife working she um teaches piano and because i'm just trying to wrap my head around like okay how are you living in in Orange County, making four grand a month with wife, kids.

Speaker 1 Well, it's not four. Yeah, it's what's been about 15.

Speaker 1 I'm assuming you're helping contribute to the bills there. Oh, yeah.
So it's been about $15,000 a month.

Speaker 1 And then I'm just in this transition where I just transitioned out of a couple clients and now I'm transitioning back in to some others. So

Speaker 1 it's about $15,000. You've been making $15,000 a month.
Yeah. Which

Speaker 1 is really not. It's not a lot of money in Orange County.
Especially when you're talking about federal income tax, state income tax,

Speaker 1 property taxes. I mean, just everything that's affiliated with living in the state of of California is absolutely terrible.
Yeah, it's not enough.

Speaker 1 The challenge is I've been trying, I don't, it's like I don't want to take on too much consulting because then it's going to take away from the long term. Long term is the brokerage.

Speaker 1 You know, like I signed a listing last week that'll pay me 100 grand when that sells. I have another one I think in the next, that'll sign the next few days that's about 120.

Speaker 1 So that's the prop, so then, but the sales cycle for those is six to eight months. Right.

Speaker 1 So that's my challenge is like I'm So you're making, what would you say an average deal would be worth to you, 100, 150 grand? Let's call it 100, yeah. Some will be smaller.

Speaker 1 I'll get some little things here and there, but I don't, you know, my focus is these

Speaker 1 decent sized deals.

Speaker 2 Let me ask

Speaker 2 on the consulting side, how many clients do you feel like you could bring in on that?

Speaker 2 If you were to say, I'm going to give

Speaker 1 you more,

Speaker 1 it's... It's this industry does not like consultants because there are a lot of people out there trying to do what I do and they don't know what they're doing.
And so they've been burned before.

Speaker 1 So the challenge is they want more of your time than you have. So you don't like that industry.
And I say, well, I don't like to consult to the industry.

Speaker 1 I either need to own it because I know what to do and I'll do it and I'll do it fast. Like I can change,

Speaker 1 I can get someone a five times return on what they're paying me in six weeks.

Speaker 1 And so I'm even doing, now I'm starting to do a guarantee. Look, I will guarantee this.
If it doesn't work, then I will pay you back. You're saying starting to help.

Speaker 2 You're saying you can go into a restaurant and turn things around pretty quickly.

Speaker 1 Yeah, not this is usually five to

Speaker 1 at least five restaurants, but a chain. So if they're doing like five, 10, 20 million revenue,

Speaker 1 the one this morning is 50 million revenue. They're losing money.
50 million revenue, they're losing money.

Speaker 1 So I told him, I said, look, I can get you flipped by 2 million bucks cash flow in the next three to six months.

Speaker 1 What is it about that, what you know specifically that brings that much value to a restaurant like that quick? So I'm, look, I'm a technician. I don't know anything about food.

Speaker 1 I don't, I'm not a chef. I hate making food.
It stresses me out. But I know how to fix businesses.
My first job was consulting Fortune 500.

Speaker 1 That was my first job out of college as a top five firm.

Speaker 1 So, I mean, why don't you go back and like work as an executive for one of these Fortune 500 companies, go make three, four, 500 grand a year plus stock benefits?

Speaker 1 I mean, that's what I was, I was making. So my last gig, I was making about 350.

Speaker 1 I should have made more, it but pandemic killed bonuses and and i had a profit sharing plan so that was the goal was i i thought this was going to turn out to be you know 600 000.

Speaker 1 so why don't you go back there um well because i don't think that that's me okay i'm better at selling like this is this is a good fit for me and so i'm trying to i'm trying to break this down i just need to understand like the level of risk that you can go and tolerate okay so right now you're making 150 grand a year

Speaker 1 um now i'm making i mean 15 a month would be like 15 $20. So you're making $180? Oh, $180.

Speaker 1 Okay. And how much do you need to live?

Speaker 1 I mean, that pays the bills with a little extra without taxes. Okay.

Speaker 1 But so...

Speaker 1 Which I mean that I should have a lot of... So are you going into debt actively right now?

Speaker 1 Technically, I would be going into debt right now. So you're going into debt.
Okay. So you need $200,000 to live.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I need, I mean, in Calif.
I mean, I mean, we're talking. I mean, $200, $250,000.
Okay. So why are you still living in California? Well, because there's not, I'm not the only decision maker.

Speaker 1 Right. So that's part of it.
Right. But the decision, the other decision maker isn't making any money, right? Not much.
Okay.

Speaker 1 So,

Speaker 1 you know, I think that the key thing to understand here, like a lot of times we put ourselves in self-imposed prisons.

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 I'm sure you understand this. And the other part of it is I have a lot of equity in the house.
Right.

Speaker 1 I mean, I own my home. Right.
And we bought at the right time. Yeah.
And so, and I'm sure there's benefits to being in Southern California, kind of like what we talked about, right?

Speaker 1 Being around certain people or whatnot. But like, couldn't that take place through travel?

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's not the reason. The main reason to stay is keeping the kids.
Like, my daughter's sophomore.

Speaker 1 I have a son in junior high. And so it's just keeping their friends and their celebration.
But who's telling you that?

Speaker 2 Yeah, I think one of the things that I'm seeing reading this, Chris is kind of starting to hit on it is like you got basically, I feel like you're looking at your past as the building blocks of where you're going.

Speaker 2 In other words, you're this guy who's been divorced, you left your religion,

Speaker 2 your parents had this, like, and these are all the things that you identify with.

Speaker 1 Right? I think I did, and I'm trying to, I'm trying to let those go. I don't really, I don't think about them as much now.
I'm thinking about, you know, signing my next however many many deals.

Speaker 2 But it feels like you've kind of numbed yourself so that you don't feel those things.

Speaker 2 And so now you're looking at your future. You're not looking at it with passion.
You're looking at it with like...

Speaker 1 So let's

Speaker 1 play a what-if game. I'm passionate.
Let's play what if. And you have to understand, there's, so part of the deal here is there's whatever.
They say like 10,000 baby boomers retiring every day.

Speaker 1 This business, there's no one doing what I do in this way to sell these beef. We're not telling you not to do this business.
No, I'm just saying I'm excited about that. So

Speaker 1 I don't want to get that wrong. Yeah, I think great business.

Speaker 1 I think a lot of the opportunity, 100, 150 grand, like we can help you build a business there, but I think we need to foundationally solve some issues here.

Speaker 1 Like, first, let's play the what if game, right? What if

Speaker 1 there were no strings attached to any past decisions, right?

Speaker 1 Family's not involved, whatever else.

Speaker 1 And Seth Shannon had an opportunity to start completely fresh, like knowing what you need to go and do, would you be in Orange County right now?

Speaker 1 I wouldn't need to be. I don't know where I would go.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I don't really have anywhere to go.

Speaker 1 Is Orange County the best option for doing what you're trying to do on the budget that you have?

Speaker 1 I don't. I mean, I see where you're going.
I don't think it needs to be. I can't do this job anymore.
I could do it it in Mexico. Okay.

Speaker 1 So now we're going somewhere. I almost did.

Speaker 1 The what if game? And I know

Speaker 1 you've been working on re-identifying yourself, right? Like you've left your religion, you left your family that used to, like,

Speaker 1 those are big steps if you're trying to completely redefine yourself.

Speaker 1 And if that's what you want, I applaud you, right? Like, because that's hard for most people.

Speaker 1 Most people, it's really difficult to say, like, you've been dedicated to this belief system, this family tract, whatever else, and go and do something.

Speaker 1 So, like, if that's what you want, like, congratulations.

Speaker 1 You know, that wouldn't fit for me, but like, that's great.

Speaker 1 But I think along those same lines, is like, what other limiting beliefs do you have that are holding you back from making the best decisions that are going to impact you and your family?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I mean, I think

Speaker 1 part of it is there's two of us. So, you know, we have to agree.
And some of that's legal stuff, right? Right? Like, wherever

Speaker 1 you go.

Speaker 2 Why do you have to agree? You have to agree on what?

Speaker 1 Because we have children.

Speaker 2 So you have to agree on what we are doing.

Speaker 1 We have to agree on where we're at. Where the children are so that we can see the children are.
And part of that is what we want. I want to see my children.

Speaker 1 Like, I'm not going to be, you know, a lot of guys take off, right? Or whatever. Or just aren't around much.

Speaker 1 That's not the life I want. I don't want that for my kids.
And so part of this is

Speaker 1 another part of this is I

Speaker 1 look, and it doesn't mean that I can't make other decisions, but a big part of this, my biggest why is I want to show my kids that, yeah, things can be tough and we can get out of it.

Speaker 1 I didn't think it would get this far. I didn't think I'd have that many failed deals.
So last year I had cash and it was going to be fine. And then I got to the point where it was like

Speaker 1 the last failed deal was like kind of put the nail in the coffin where things added tighter.

Speaker 1 Have you talked to your ex about relook any?

Speaker 1 No, she's thought about it, but she would want to go somewhere

Speaker 1 won't work for me. So it's just one of those

Speaker 1 work for you. Because where she wants to go, I don't want to be.
Where does she work for me? Where?

Speaker 1 Idaho. She wants to go to Idaho? Why wouldn't Idaho work for you?

Speaker 1 Because I don't want to live in Idaho. Okay.

Speaker 1 The lifestyle that works for me is not there. Okay.
But it doesn't mean, I mean, there are other places.

Speaker 1 I'm thinking of all the places in the world that you could live besides crazy California.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Orange County is not so crazy. I don't know.
I love Orange County, but guess what? You're great people.

Speaker 1 I mean, great people, but you still are at the beck and call of Governor Newsome, right? Like, you still have the crazy taxes, the crazy everything else.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't care how great the people are there. Yeah, no, Orange County.
I wish Orange County could secede from California because it really is completely different.

Speaker 1 But I understand what you're saying.

Speaker 1 And what I'm saying is, like, you have ownership over this. Like, you could go to Vegas.
You could go to Idaho. You could probably go to Utah.

Speaker 1 Like, there's somewhere that your ex-wife would agree to that would still give you the benefit that you want of being around your kids and spend way less money, which would allow you the dollars.

Speaker 1 to be able to go invest in what is absolutely needed to be able to grow this business. Yeah, I think part of it is I've seen this as a very short-term issue.
You know,

Speaker 1 once I get a commission or two, I mean, we're good and things are, you know, things are rolling because I anticipate having a lot of these coming up quickly. So that's the other part.

Speaker 1 I mean, another option is

Speaker 1 to sell it. Well, what's the other? I mean, the other option is sell the house.
We have a bunch of cash and rent for a little bit. And then, you know, it buys me a lot of time, actually.

Speaker 1 Which

Speaker 1 that would work too. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and you know, I'm just, I'm just trying to poke holes in like, in your, in your beliefs. No, I'm glad.
No, it's good. It's good for me to, because a lot of this is

Speaker 1 my second half. Because I've been trying to be respectful to her and what for sure how she sees her life, how she sees raising the children,

Speaker 1 all these friendships and things that we've made over the many years being there.

Speaker 1 It's not that it shouldn't be hard for me to make the money we need. It's the challenge is doing these two different things at the same time can be tough.

Speaker 1 Now, the deal from February, that the last one that he pulled out three weeks before, called me Friday and said, I'm ready now. I'm serious.
And this is a deal that I think I can add

Speaker 1 a million bucks to cash flow within six months. Levi, would you say?

Speaker 1 I was asking why Idah, like, why does she want Idaho? She has a sister there.

Speaker 1 That's why. That's the only reason.

Speaker 1 How much money could you get by selling your house? I mean, it's got about 600,

Speaker 1 maybe a little more of equity.

Speaker 1 And technically, I sell businesses now, right? But I have a real, to sell that, I have a real estate license, so I could save some money on the commission as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, dude, I mean, 600,000 versus like how much cash you have in the bank right now? Not enough.

Speaker 1 What's your 40?

Speaker 2 What's your house worth?

Speaker 1 $2 million.

Speaker 1 So, and do you go and rent something very similar in the same area? Well, it wouldn't even have to be that big, right?

Speaker 1 I mean, we live in one of the nicest, I mean, it's one of the nicest communities, nice home, which at the time made a ton of sense.

Speaker 1 I'm super, I'm super glad I bought it when I did because it, it made a lot of money. We actually already took a little bit out to pay some stuff off before.
It was great.

Speaker 1 Like, we were in a great situation. Do you feel like you're lying to yourself living there?

Speaker 1 I haven't been at all.

Speaker 1 Now, I mean, do you, do you feel like

Speaker 1 no? Not at all? No. I feel like that's, that's what's strange is I feel like I completely fit in.
Right.

Speaker 1 The issue is it's a short-term issue. Yeah.
And so the question is everything works out though. How short-term? Well, it hasn't worked out.
Right. Right.
I've already been through a lot of that.

Speaker 1 Right. And so, yeah, it could be longer for, you know, whatever.

Speaker 2 But so the fear, the fear is that if it works out, great. If it doesn't work out, what do I do?

Speaker 1 Well, it'll look, it'll work out. It's a matter of time.
Okay, so let's. It's a matter of an hour or something.
Let's continue down the what-if game.

Speaker 1 You go, you sell your property, you make 600 grand. What would you do with that? Well, first of all, would your ex-wife be entitled to half of that?

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 she would. I mean, the goal was for us to keep stability for the kids.
So, I mean, I'd say, I don't know.

Speaker 1 Again, this is, if it was my decision, okay, that let's say that. Yeah, like playing the what if game.
If it's my decision, then they would move into a house that was cheaper.

Speaker 1 They could rent a place that's four grand a month or something. Okay.

Speaker 1 They would have enough bedrooms.

Speaker 1 And, you know, then I could actually rent the place for fairly cheap and you know okay so what would you do with it what would you do with the money what would you do with the proceeds

Speaker 1 well I have never yeah I've never thought about it that's a good idea

Speaker 1 I would take the first 20 sorry

Speaker 1 no go ahead I would take the first twenty thousand and invest in what I'm doing because

Speaker 1 right off the bat I've got a bunch of little things that I could be doing to drum up a lot more of these deals. Right.

Speaker 1 Because the more deals I have, the more listings I have, the more likely it works out. And the more likely it works out faster.

Speaker 1 Because if I have five deals all at the same time, if two of them don't go through and three of them go through, great.

Speaker 2 That's 300 grand. So

Speaker 2 one of the biggest challenges is like you're trying to create a specific experience for your kids.

Speaker 1 I'm trying to create consistency for my kids. I think divorce is already chaotic enough.

Speaker 1 As I talk to people whose parents were divorced, I asked a lot of questions about what hurt you in the end? Like, what were the things that, you know, if they didn't happen, would have been better.

Speaker 1 A lot of those are around how they treated each other,

Speaker 1 the two, you know, mom and dad, how they talk about each other,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 another, and just the consistency of, you know, still having the same friends.

Speaker 1 And, you know, having, if this one part of your life is different and it's difficult, having everything else consistent can be really helpful for children.

Speaker 1 But that doesn't mean I can't, look, I can, there are other houses in the same neighborhood,

Speaker 1 you know, a block away that are half the price.

Speaker 2 Because I think one of the one of the biggest challenges you have is like how you define what's best for them and the sacrifice to

Speaker 2 provide that. In other words,

Speaker 2 maybe there's a short-term sacrifice that creates way more stability, but it creates instability before it creates more stability.

Speaker 2 And I think sometimes there's like limiting beliefs in that aspect of it's like you have a priority to create stability, but your

Speaker 2 worst case scenario, we talk a lot about like your worst case scenario.

Speaker 2 A lot of times you're so close to your worst case scenario that, and that's where people stay comfortable is because they don't want to get to their worst case scenario, which would be like falling only a little bit further.

Speaker 2 Falling a little bit further, but your best case scenario is like 10x, 20x, what you're currently experiencing.

Speaker 1 No, and this, okay, so what's funny about this, okay?

Speaker 1 I'm not afraid of the worst case scenario because I've been through a lot worse. Right.
That 2008 situation, that was terrible. I mean, that was like...

Speaker 2 You're talking finances, or are you talking kids?

Speaker 1 I'm talking at the, well, I'm saying like

Speaker 1 worst case scenario at any moment in your life, right? And everything changing, saying, okay, I need to move, I need to do that. Like when your whole life changes, right? So that's as bad as it gets.

Speaker 1 The bad as it gets in this world is you move somewhere else, right? Yeah. And you're still alive and you can still provide food for your family.
It's really not as bad as everyone thinks.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And so for me, I actually think, so given this conversation, I wonder if it would be an interesting, it would be interesting to sit down with the family and say, look,

Speaker 1 if all of a sudden we lived in a different house,

Speaker 1 but now we could go do more things as a family. Right.

Speaker 1 I mean, because that's interesting to me. Because you guys are being held back

Speaker 1 with 600K that you have in this house. We're being house poor.
Yes. Well, and I always said I would never be house poor, but we weren't, right? We were doing fine.
And the past was there.

Speaker 1 And COVID did hurt my earning potential for a few years because I all of a sudden didn't get extra profit sharing and all this stuff. But that said, because I'm, you know, that said,

Speaker 1 now I am house poor because the house is the expensive part.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know? Well, so, I mean, so going to the kids, right, I think it's a great idea. Sit down with kids, like really find out what they want.
First of all, like we think our kids want more

Speaker 1 or like completely different what they actually want, right? I put my kids through, we've moved 14 times during my career, right?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 before we live in the house that we're in right now, we lived in my in-laws garage in an apartment. I had four kids in that apartment.

Speaker 1 in this house and we had moved from our house in California, which was a really nice home, 3,200 square feet in San Diego, right? Really nice, into a garage, and then into a really nice home.

Speaker 1 And we were in that garage for a year and a half. Guess what? Their life didn't change, right?

Speaker 1 Like, they were happy, they were good, they made new friends, and everything else, where like everything from the outside looking in from a parent standpoint would have been like, oh, I'm putting my kids through this.

Speaker 1 crazy thing or whatever. And so I just think

Speaker 1 we buy too much into that narrative. It's just not real.

Speaker 1 And I agree with you. I actually don't think that, especially if I could keep them in a similar neighborhood, going to the same schools, like they'd be great.

Speaker 1 I don't think they'd have a problem with it at all. I think the challenge is my ex-wife, who,

Speaker 1 I've been trying to help keep

Speaker 1 her head in the game, let me put it that way, right? Over the last couple of years.

Speaker 1 To her, she's like, oh my gosh, now I don't have income anymore. How am I going to live? Yada, yada, yada.

Speaker 1 Now, I'm not the kind of person that I'm not gonna I'm not gonna leave her and make her go you know whatever I prefer that she she and I didn't grow up with parents around

Speaker 1 and so our our commitment when we got married was that I would work and she was gonna stop working so she didn't develop her career and she doesn't have a way to make good money and we want our kids to have parents around at least one well here's I think the unfortunate truth is as a non-income earner you have to be the decision driver in this situation right?

Speaker 1 Like

Speaker 1 if you're paying the bills, right? I mean as the income earner. As the income earner, right? If you're paying the bills as the income earner, you've got to be the more of a decision maker, right?

Speaker 1 Because at the end of the day, you're responsible, right? Like

Speaker 1 she's not the one floating the bills. And I want to be because I'm the one who can do it.
And that's fine.

Speaker 1 Like congratulations that you're pulling that off as a divorced man because I think that's great and a big, big honor. But like, but like,

Speaker 1 you know, you can't have her high society desires overcome

Speaker 1 what your income is, right? And so like, you've got to put yourself up for the best opportunity to be able to go and build this business. Yeah.
Because, so let's, let's continue down to this game.

Speaker 1 You said you take 20 grand. So if you had, you came upon this money, you sold the house, you had 20 grand, you would go and you would invest it in opportunities to be able to market? I would do a few.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I would do a few things because

Speaker 1 the goal would be to start to test what's working, right?

Speaker 1 Because because right now what I'm doing is working I'm doing very little and I need to do a lot like I could do a ton more I could first I would bring on interns to help me input data and make would you stop consulting absolutely so so yeah first of all let's just unburden that right now we're gonna use a little Kamala Harris crap here unburden the past must we

Speaker 1 unburden what has been or whatever she says right so I wouldn't know what she says yeah she she has this funny phrase that everyone makes fun of her. So

Speaker 1 let's just say you unburden yourself from actually having to go do the thing, which would you say that you hate doing that right now? Well, I hate it.

Speaker 1 The only reason I hate it is because they don't listen. And it's one thing if you have clients who want to change, but they don't.
And I'm selling myself for pennies when I could be investing.

Speaker 1 Have you heard us talk about the energy matrix? No. Okay, so turn around here.
I got it just right on the TV right behind you. Okay, so there's four quadrants.
This is quadrant one,

Speaker 1 two,

Speaker 1 three, and four. Okay, so quadrant one is low energy, low value.
Energy is defined by things that you love doing, right? Like when you do it, you get energy back. You're like, that's awesome, right?

Speaker 1 Value is defined by what it would cost for you to do it or somebody else to do it. So low value would be something that like is cheap to hire somebody else to do, right?

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 what I hear you saying is that consulting is quadrant three. It's low energy.
People aren't listening to you. They're not doing what you, so you're not, you have, but it, but it's high value.

Speaker 1 It's paying the bills, right? Would you agree with that?

Speaker 1 At the moment,

Speaker 1 yes. Under current circumstance.

Speaker 1 Borderline. I mean, if anything, it's somewhere between quadrant three and quadrant one.
Okay. So it might not.
Low energy, low value. Yeah, because it's not really paying what it could or should.

Speaker 1 Right, right. But I mean, it's higher value to your current situation.
I mean, let's put it this way.

Speaker 1 I was charging one client $10,000 a month, and in six weeks, we had a half million dollars a year in savings. I mean, I should be charging a lot more.
So my point is, that's why I say it's low value.

Speaker 1 Okay, so it's even

Speaker 1 I was saying it's not quadrant four, right? It's not.

Speaker 1 No, it's quadrant one. Quadrant one.
Okay.

Speaker 2 Let me ask a question on it. So right now your focus is restaurants.

Speaker 2 Are there other industries that you can apply your same skill set on?

Speaker 1 Of course. I've worked in 30 industries between private private equity and consulting and all the stuff.
But this is your main niche. You know this the best.

Speaker 1 Well, this is where I've got the most, yeah, I've got a lot of credibility. But the other thing is, like, anything that's like chain, right, whatever, that's like a perfect model.

Speaker 1 Restaurants are one, they're the most complicated, actually. Most others, like you think about gyms or all these like Jiffy Lubes or whatever, they're way simpler.

Speaker 1 So restaurants are about as complicated as they get.

Speaker 1 Okay, so let's let's keep going down this what-if game because the what-if game I think is your roadmap to where you're going to get some freedom here. Right.

Speaker 1 And so

Speaker 1 you're able to put away consulting, right? And you're able to go and spend some money.

Speaker 1 So first of all, when building a business, when building any type of business, you have to first identify the quadrant one activities that you're doing on a daily basis. Right.

Speaker 1 And from the sound of it, you have an assistant that you're hiring for one hour a week right now. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Look, because if I have a $30

Speaker 1 cable bill, I won't pay it, even if I have a million bucks in the bank. So I hire her to make sure I pay my business.

Speaker 1 I know my weaknesses.

Speaker 1 And that's a perfect example of

Speaker 1 low energy, low value, right? Like you'd rather pay her. It's cheap.
Low energy, high value. Well, it's the highest value I have in my life.
She is the most important person.

Speaker 1 Well, you're saying it's high

Speaker 1 value to me. But I'm saying the actual thing that she does

Speaker 1 is a low value because it doesn't cost you a lot of money to get it oh okay right low cost yeah low value right that value is cost value is okay value is cost energy is what what it so that you would hate doing you hate paying that bill yeah right and it and you can easily uh hire it out so now what we have to do is identify the other things in your life that are the same way right that you would do in building this business right that are low energy low value and i've identified a bunch of those things yeah well so one of those things is i i need to build a database of people to go after because I have to go find these people who own the restaurant chains, right?

Speaker 1 There's something like 750,000 restaurants in the Rebus. And a lot of those are franchise, but the independents are the ones that need my help the most.

Speaker 1 And that's where the biggest niche is that's not being filled. So for me, it's I got to put them in a database.
So I got to go find information, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 It's a lot of just administrative kind of stuff. I can get an intern for that.

Speaker 1 You can get a Filipino, right? Like, dude, there's Filipinos that do that kind of crap for five to six bucks an hour and are phenomenal at it.

Speaker 1 They can do incredible research, like access to databases, everything else. Like, that's literally all they do.
That might be even better because then they don't graduate. Right.

Speaker 1 They don't graduate. It's essentially like

Speaker 1 an intern forever. Right, right, right.
No, I mean, that, and that could be. And so that's one.
It's like putting stuff in the database. A second one could even be cold calls.

Speaker 1 Just, hey, are you considering selling your restaurants in the next two years? Okay. And then set up a meeting for me.
Kind of put me up as like the expert because I am.

Speaker 1 So what would you say when you're in like your zone, your expertise, what's your high energy, high value?

Speaker 1 Like what activities do you need to be doing every single day to make this thing just yeah, the things that are the most valuable for me to be doing are having conversations with people like who are ready, who want to sell their business, right?

Speaker 1 So like talking, talking to them about what closing deals. So seeing the numbers.
I need to see the numbers.

Speaker 1 Analyzing. Yeah, analyzing them.
I don't need to necessarily put them all together, but I need to see them in the end to say, okay, what do we have here? Yep. And then what is this worth?

Speaker 1 And then having conversations with the seller to say, you know, those conversations are the most valuable for me. So, negotiation.
Yeah, negotiation and well, and the initial sale to get the listing.

Speaker 1 Because when they meet me and I can talk about every single piece of their business and they realize I understand it, that

Speaker 1 it wait, it it's

Speaker 1 it builds a lot of of trust. So if I'm hearing you right, trust fast.
If I'm hearing you're right, if you had a magic wand and you could have somebody build a database,

Speaker 1 do cold calls, generate leads, generate leads, generate leads,

Speaker 1 and

Speaker 1 then you just sat, and then you would also want somebody to compile

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 information, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah. And then help and then

Speaker 1 administer, yeah, oh, maybe you're saying the the the financials yeah i could yes i could have someone put the financials together as well yes so you'd you'd want somebody to do some initial due diligence this is what i when i was at ge capital i got a guy like this and he was like uh how much did he cost well i wasn't paying for him because i was an employee luckily but how much do you think he'd cost he cost at the time he was probably 120 grand or something okay but i don't need that I mean, at the time, you know, he was an up-and-comer at GE.

Speaker 1 He was under me. And I would just, if I was out having meetings, I'd call him, hey, I'm sending you financials, have them ready by the time I get back.

Speaker 1 I get back, we have a meeting the next day, we have an approved deal by the next. I was super efficient, so I drove.
Okay, so we're going to keep playing this what-if game.

Speaker 1 If you had unlimited leads and like deals put in front of you, how many could you close a month?

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 1 a lot. I don't

Speaker 1 even know what to do. Two a week, one a week?

Speaker 1 Because the only thing I would have to be doing, right, I could, I could hire out almost everything except for, you know some of those initial calls and like a check-in i mean i don't know 10 20 30 it wouldn't really matter okay you could close 10 you could close 10 a month yeah okay okay let's this is great this is great and each deal is going to be worth at least a hundred grand um on average i think they'll be about a hundred grand okay the stuff i've been going after it's all been about that so let's let's think about this you're talking about a million dollars in deals

Speaker 1 right

Speaker 1 10 a month a million dollars in deals Okay.

Speaker 1 What would it cost to generate a million dollars in deals? So we talk about like a data compilation guy due diligence. That's the 10 grand a month.
Okay.

Speaker 1 Well, and some of this, the other side of that is online, right?

Speaker 1 So there's a lot of people that I don't have any information for that I need to go find by what is saying, I'm just saying like social media, whatever.

Speaker 1 LinkedIn might be a great way.

Speaker 1 But we're talking about like your most expensive employees. We're talking about about somebody that can do data compilation due diligence, 10, 12 grand a month, okay?

Speaker 1 Somebody that does database compilation. We're talking about a Filipino for $2K a month, right?

Speaker 1 Someone that does cold calls. You could literally have five Filipinos doing cold calls, literally, that

Speaker 1 now we got

Speaker 1 $4K a month, okay?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you can go and spend a bunch of money on marketing, right? Like you can literally spend 50K a month. Right.
Yeah. And I was going to say, the thing I might run out, I may run out of leads to call.

Speaker 1 So that's where I got to figure out where to find the information. Well, so again, I think.
You're saying there's 700,000, how many restaurants?

Speaker 1 There's, I mean, the numbers that I see, like across, I mean, it's about 750,000 restaurants in the U.S. Okay, so 750K.

Speaker 1 Now, a lot of those are franchised, like, you know, McDonald's has 20,000, you know, Subway has 20,000 restaurants, that kind of thing. So, a lot of those are

Speaker 1 those. Now, I do have, I can go after those too.

Speaker 1 I have, you know, two, I can, you know, I have a couple very large national brands that are kind of under, that are under me as well that I could be having someone call.

Speaker 1 So, what I want to point out here, turn around.

Speaker 1 There's a lot.

Speaker 1 What I want to point out here. Wait, let me say too.
If I run out of restaurants, there's other businesses. I can go to gyms.
I can do.

Speaker 1 You can do home service businesses for us because we want to buy those deals. Yeah, that's a lot to shout.

Speaker 1 So, okay, let's just. Okay, we're talking about 10 deals a month is a million.
Let's say you don't do a million. Let's say you do one deal,

Speaker 1 right? Right. And you hired everything out that we just talked about.
And that's been my goal, one deal. Okay.
But I don't want that to be my goal because 64, 66,000.

Speaker 1 So, on the worst-case scenario, you close one deal a month and you net 34K.

Speaker 1 you'd have 66k in expenses

Speaker 1 you'd have 34 in net

Speaker 1 which is about three times as much as what you're what you're uh making right now right

Speaker 1 so like

Speaker 1 if you had a full-time team

Speaker 1 right

Speaker 1 and let's just say initially you didn't spend the $50,000 in marketing, but you had a full-time team of

Speaker 1 people that are compiling a database, cold callers, and somebody that's going to do all your due diligence and everything else. We're talking about $16,000 a month.

Speaker 1 How many months could you go off of what you have in equity to go and build this without making a deal?

Speaker 1 So let's say $15K for the family to live and then

Speaker 1 whatever, $30,000 total maybe with living and this. Yeah.
So we go, what is that, 20 20 months? 20 months, dude. Yep.
You can go for 20 months before you close one deal. Right.

Speaker 1 Would you ever in your life go 20 months full time and not close a deal?

Speaker 1 I'm getting close to that right now.

Speaker 1 No, that's not true. You've been closing deals.
No, that's true. I've been closing deals.
Yes, you're right. You've been closing deals.
You've been closing consulting deals, right?

Speaker 1 Like, have you ever in your life

Speaker 1 concentrated on something for 20 months and made zero dollars? And that's what I would say. No, absolutely not.
I mean, even at GE, they gave me the worst database.

Speaker 1 I mean, my friend who was already there told me not to take the job. He's like, this is a crap database.
They put 11 of us out there. They hired 11 people, gave us the worst stuff.

Speaker 1 They said, we don't think there's any deals here. After the first year, I did like two or three deals.
No one else had done any. They let all those people go.
They gave me the whole database.

Speaker 1 And then I started blowing it up.

Speaker 2 I think on the other side, you're talking about

Speaker 2 the seller side, right? You're trying to reach out to people who are going to be able to do that.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that can be buy side too.

Speaker 2 I think the the buy side would be even more lucrative as far as deal flow.

Speaker 1 It can be.

Speaker 1 The challenge is buyers,

Speaker 1 it's matching the buyers is harder. But if you have a listing, if you go list your house, you're going to get paid for it, right? But if it's going to sell at all.

Speaker 1 So that's the place where I'm going to make the most money.

Speaker 1 But to your point, even on the way here, the listing I got last week that isn't even up yet, I was already calling, I think, the perfect buyer on the way here, telling him this is your deal.

Speaker 2 Well what I'm saying though is

Speaker 2 people who are looking to buy restaurants right like they're getting there's restaurants on the market they just don't know if they should buy them or not

Speaker 2 right and so like private equity I mean we've had private equity where they bring in an expert right why aren't you getting brought in on those deals as the expert where you have a piece of the transaction

Speaker 1 That's consulting. Yeah, well the private equity funds in our industry, they're specific to restaurants and they know what they're doing.

Speaker 1 They don't need me.

Speaker 2 So you're just sellers.

Speaker 1 They need me to give them deals. So, and I know them, and I have a deal I'm working on with one of them right now, but I'm just saying.
Which, I mean, dude,

Speaker 1 the opportunities are unlimited, right? But let's just focus on what you have here, right?

Speaker 1 Like, yeah, I was hoping this is where we went today because this has been, it's almost like I'm afraid of this. Dude, and here's the thing, but I didn't have a way to fund it.

Speaker 1 But we just figured that out. We just figured that out.
Like, and so you're like, I've already got the money, apparently. Yes, dude.
You're living in a self-imposed prison right now. I know, right?

Speaker 1 And you're not taking the action. You're doing things that you hate, like consulting.

Speaker 1 You're barely paying bills and you're slowly kicking your side project down the down the street, hoping that a few of these deals close rather than you're like, dude, you know, right?

Speaker 1 Like, you got to stop lying to yourself. You know, this will work.
Oh, I know. If you go 100% of it.

Speaker 1 Like, it's almost like this sick hobby that I just sit there and I just like, okay, who's the next person? Because I get excited.

Speaker 1 And I don't think everyone in this world does this, but I'm sure you do and you probably do too. But like, what will the next thing, the next rock I turn over, what's under it?

Speaker 1 Like, I just get excited about it. I don't know why.

Speaker 1 You're a deal maker. You're an entrepreneur.
Like, and here's the thing. You can go and build this business.
I know you have a goal to make a million bucks next year.

Speaker 1 Let's freaking make a million bucks a month, dude. Like, no, like, and

Speaker 1 this is totally doable. You literally just have to say, you got to look at your worst case scenario.
Okay, I'm going to go. I'm going to sell my house.
I'm going to have 600 grand. I have 20 months.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 1 That pays for family and that pays for full, like a full team, dude.

Speaker 1 Like, we're talking all the Filipino back that you need and one NBA that knows what he's doing to be able to do all the work that is necessary, literally to fund that crap.

Speaker 1 To fund family, everything, you need one deal every three months. Yep.
One deal every three months. But let's take the real upside, right? Like, you know that with a team like that,

Speaker 1 what is the potential that you can go and close? Yeah, I'm already on pace for about two a month because I've got two that should sign, that, you know, almost one is signed. Lynn Xman should sign.

Speaker 1 I have two more. I'm teaming up for next month.

Speaker 1 And now, that's without doing hardly anything and now and that's what 10 SB and that's you're doing it on the side right because because your consulting thing you get rid of the consulting thing you go a hundred miles deep on this one thing and you have no downside potential because you know in the back of your mind I got 20 months to make zero dollars right yeah and I could just go all all in and now we go and scale we put dollars behind leads we go and then literally a million bucks or 10 deals a month very doable and then what does it look like to go and scale this to a hundred million a year but which also forgetting he's already has you already have deals lined up

Speaker 1 yeah that's yeah i already have deals lined up and those will take what six months yeah so that's the thing it's been the sales cycle that's a little bit long but which you could which you can afford under this scenario that's part of the value right is being able to wait a lot of people can't can't or won't do that but but the other the other part of this too is in getting the deals um you know if I start, when I start to think about like referral sources, so investment advisors who know their client has this business they need to sell, they're not going to get paid, the advisor, till they sell that business and invest the money, right?

Speaker 1 Like estate attorneys,

Speaker 1 other brokers, a lot of them don't want to do restaurants. So

Speaker 1 I could have someone calling all these people too, who are all referral sources.

Speaker 1 Levi, what are you thinking, man? What's going through you? What's cooking over your brain over there? I was just cooking cooking up

Speaker 1 like the outreach piece of like getting leads, but also thinking about your marketing strategy.

Speaker 1 Because you're clearly the expert in the industry, how easy it will be to position yourself where you could save a lot of money by positioning yourself as the expert to personalize the brand, right?

Speaker 1 Giving out information

Speaker 1 and selling implementation like Alex Ramosi does. And people are now coming to you like, hey, I'm...

Speaker 1 you know, you make an Instagram video or YouTube video about, hey, how do you understand if my business is ready to sell? Or like, how do I go find a good deal?

Speaker 1 And now people are coming to you like, holy crap. Now I know this is everything I need to do to get my restaurant ready to sell.
Now you've got a...

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I've seen this like in your write-up here, right? Like you have this part of your model.

Speaker 1 You're like, hey, I'm going to go and do short videos that educate the restaurant industry, do like my own little podcast. Totally do it.

Speaker 1 And here, let's go back. The reason you're not doing this is because you have these chains built up, right?

Speaker 1 Like, so we just remove those chains, get back to this, this area of freedom of imagination, right? Of like, what if, what are the possibilities, right?

Speaker 1 Dude, like, so my challenge would be to you, one, go and get that money, right? Like, like literally free that up as fast as you possibly can, sell the house.

Speaker 1 Like, it's, it's your ball and chain, okay? Two would be go and build a five-year model. Okay, so we have, we have a five-year model.
It's part of our course.

Speaker 1 We're going to, we'll give you the videos for that on like how to build the five-year model, which is like mapping out what you want this thing to look like from an organizational structure, backing it in with like what you would pay to salespeople and everything else.

Speaker 1 Because dude, I really think you have the ability to build like Levi's talking about that personal brand, generate leads, be the authority.

Speaker 1 of this space and have a huge sales team that you're doing $100 million in commissions a year.

Speaker 1 Like I really think you have something here that's absolutely phenomenal and nobody is effectively doing well in private equity. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And people are, and there are a lot of people trying to sell franchise. Everyone's so focused on restaurant franchise, right? Franchise, franchise, franchise, because now it's sexy, right?

Speaker 1 Even though it wasn't for a long, long time.

Speaker 1 And now, but

Speaker 1 there are these ancillary things that no one's doing.

Speaker 1 So there's a huge opportunity.

Speaker 2 I think another thing, too, and this kind of ties back to our initial conversation.

Speaker 2 So first off, like making your money in concentration, and then you keep your money in diversification.

Speaker 2 So we talked about concentrating and what's really going to make you the money. But secondly, I think once with that clarity, I think you have an opportunity to teach your kids something really cool.

Speaker 2 Pitching them the vision, letting them see the vision go from idea to formation.

Speaker 1 That's a lot of value. Well, not only that, but someone the other day said, why aren't you hiring your kids? Right.

Speaker 1 And I'm like, my third, you know, my 13-year-old would, probably have a 15-year-old too. They would love to be one of my Filipinos.
Right. Right.
Yeah. Some of some of your

Speaker 1 database cold callers, whatever else. Right.
Yeah. Then doing the database stuff, they could totally do that.
They're super smart. And they want to earn money.
And I'm just like. Perfect opportunity.

Speaker 1 There's no more newspapers anymore. Right.
So they literally can't get a job. Right.
But I'm like trying to just do our businesses. I'm talking to you, Gavin Newsom.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I hope he's listening.

Speaker 1 I'd be happy to sit down with you, with him. For sure.
Love to. We have a lot to talk about.
Let's go.

Speaker 1 So, okay. So, I mean, dude, tons and tons of tons of opportunities.
So, what we're going to do, we're going to give you, we'll give you access to like some of our five-year plan.

Speaker 1 Definitely go and like implement that. The other thing is, so we do weekly consulting with a bunch of business owners.
We want to just give you free access to come and be a part of that.

Speaker 1 Come join our calls for a month. I'd love to.
Be a part of that. So for anybody that's watching this show,

Speaker 1 you guys can go and try it out. But yeah, we have a paid group where we do twice a week calls, everything like that, where we do a lot of this, right? Like question and answers.

Speaker 1 This is what's working and whatnot. So we're going to invite you to come join and just be a part of that with us.
And just from being our guest,

Speaker 1 come and do that for a month. But dude, like you've got, you've got something awesome here if you just will take the action.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, I've got a, so we're talking about selling, right? And I've got a couple ideas to sell to different people in my family now, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Selling the house, and that's not a, it won't be a simple task. But this is the thing.
If I think back to, um,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 I'd never been divorced. I'd never gone through that process.
Right. And there are a lot of feelings sometimes.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And especially for, you know, my ex-wife, she had a lot of feelings about it. And,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 1 now I think we've gotten to a place where I think at the time it wouldn't have worked. Like,

Speaker 1 but now, you know, we're in a better place. She wants a little more freedom.
She wants, you know, I think the things that we want, I think things have calmed down enough that

Speaker 1 this conversation could work. Create some alignment.
So what do you think is going to be the biggest hurdles in going to executing the game plan? I think it's convincing her to do it.

Speaker 1 But I think taking a step back to say, hey, look, you're part of this. Look, I need to make her a part of the team.

Speaker 1 And I believe in that.

Speaker 1 We're a team forever, no matter what. We have these beautiful children together and they're awesome kids and we want everyone to be happy in our family.

Speaker 1 I think helping her understand kind of the longer-term view, helping her understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. She believes in me.
It's not that.

Speaker 1 And I think she's become more and more open to the fact that this, what I'm doing now makes sense. I'm on the right path.
Right. So I think that

Speaker 1 in, you know, in my kind of initial reaction, that's, I think, the hardest. That's really the hardest.
Yeah. I think that's it.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I just say to like anybody watching this, like, it is so important that you realize how much self-imposed chains that we put on ourselves, right? Like

Speaker 1 we feel that we are captured and incarcerated to our current lifestyle. We have a choice.
We have a choice to make, right?

Speaker 1 Whether it's selling the house, whether it's relocating, whether it's, I mean, there are so many ways that we can change our life, yet we just think like, this is my situation.

Speaker 1 I just have to deal with it. And so like, I love just the idea.
It's one of my favorite practices is the what if game, right? Like, what if things were different?

Speaker 1 How can we just imagine, like allow ourselves to be free for a second, right like and not bound by the current situation just be free and like how would we go about this differently and i and i'm not my my intention is not to plug uh coaches here yeah but i do think that it's so valuable to be able to have someone you know who's

Speaker 1 you know your friends don't always see that or they won't tell you that or i don't know whatever it is right yeah friends don't always they're great they're there to support you and love you no matter what right well sometimes they're trying to protect the relationship, not the person.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're usually protecting the relationship. Yeah, yeah, all kinds of motivations, right? But

Speaker 1 not bad, but you know, going to a coach, like you know, you and I, we both worked with Satema, right?

Speaker 1 Satema changed my life. Yeah, like I started getting crap done when I went to Absolute after working with him.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and I had a lot of things that I was stuck already, and he helped me give me tools as a coach that I could use because I'm super like ADD. Right.
And it's just, and it's hard.

Speaker 1 And sometimes I'll get in my head and get emotional about things. And he really gave me some tools to help me to be way more effective.

Speaker 1 And I'll tell you, you know, leading that, you know, 4,000 people in that company through the pandemic, I wouldn't have been able to do as good a job at all.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't even have taken the job had I not worked with him. Right.
And so I need to level up again.

Speaker 1 And,

Speaker 1 you know, I just think that sometimes it's helpful to have someone else who can look at it and who's smart, who's been through it, like you guys and say you know what you're missing something right right dude so valuable uh you you've got all the tools here right like you've got the unit economics yeah got the know-how right like it's just you know

Speaker 1 like i said unburdening yourself from like all these things and allowing yourself to go all in on this thing that's absolutely an incredible it's a huge opportunity i think to echo that right you can only see yourself if you look in the mirror, but we can look at you and see all aspects of what's going on.

Speaker 2 Coaching is very valuable for that aspect.

Speaker 2 What's interesting is we all go through experiences when we're maybe less mature on

Speaker 2 whether it's like facing bankruptcy, right? Sometimes you're like, crap, I have to do bankruptcy.

Speaker 2 And it's like, no, actually, you can go negotiate with every one of your debtors and not go through bankruptcy.

Speaker 1 Which is actually what I did. And I wish I would have done that.
Well, I went to a bankruptcy attorney in Orem, Utah, where we lived. And I said, I paid the guy for one hour.

Speaker 1 And I said, you know, tell me my options. He's like, he looked at the situation.
He said, you don't have options. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, yeah, file bankruptcy.

Speaker 1 There's no way. File bankruptcy.
And I was like, screw you. I think I said screw you.

Speaker 1 And I walked out. And I went.
And I tell you, I feared the doorbell for years because

Speaker 1 at that house where you and I lived, that neighborhood, that doorbell would ring and it was someone else delivering papers to me. And I'd immediately call him.

Speaker 1 and I'd call them right away, say, look, I owe you, I owe you,

Speaker 1 sorry. You're good, man.
Sure.

Speaker 1 I owe you money. This is what I have.
This is what I don't have. You know, how can we work it out?

Speaker 1 And so I did avoid it.

Speaker 1 Everyone around me told me I should file bankruptcy.

Speaker 1 And I'm not proud of it still, though. I lost money.
I didn't, it wasn't my intention.

Speaker 1 But you face it like a man. That's awesome.
I face it. It took me eight years.
And I paid it all off.

Speaker 1 And it was through selling at GE Capital. I made commissions, paid it all off.
And then I was able to buy a house and I have, you know, whatever. So it's not even about the credit score.

Speaker 1 It's not about

Speaker 1 any of that. It's more about like, I just want to see if I could do it.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 I think that's, I think it's the power in what your story is, right? It's, it's. No matter what the problem is, there's always a solution.
Sometimes we don't see it.

Speaker 2 And it's how can you get some more clarity to see past the problem? Yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, one of the things that we do with all of our guests is we have them do a disc assessment, which he did. And, you know, you're a high D, low C, low I, and your

Speaker 1 disc style is results driven, which is like one of my favorite personalities, right? Like, not mine.

Speaker 1 It has its minuses.

Speaker 1 It has its negatives. It does.
But you get crap done.

Speaker 1 I do. Yeah.
And that's the beauty. Like, when you have a personality like this and an opportunity like you do, where literally you can run for 20 months without making income,

Speaker 1 you will find a way to succeed because of who you are. Right.

Speaker 1 And man, just lean into that, man. Like go and, and like, I know it's going to be difficult.
There's going to be some heartache and making some of these changes, right?

Speaker 1 Going and addressing it with the ex-wife, with the kids, with community, with your pride, right? Whatever it is, right?

Speaker 1 Whatever, whatever the things that you worry about okay right like but it's gonna be hard like you're gonna have to go and do some stuff that's not comfortable yeah and so like man go address that and like dude go run man this thing this thing's awesome get away from that consulting get out of get out of that that uh you know quadrant one and quadrant three

Speaker 1 and like just get in your zone of quadrant four the things that you love doing negotiating deals leading teams right like you can go and build something that's pretty freaking awesome that can be gold gone and sold for you know eight nine figures yeah yeah yeah so sweet man so what are you committed to doing

Speaker 1 having some difficult conversations about um

Speaker 1 yeah selling the house and then uh

Speaker 1 making my plan my five-year plan okay so we got here game plan so conversations yep sessions

Speaker 1 for selling house okay two you said what? Five-year plan? Five-year plan, which then needs to back out to a one-year plan, which needs to back out to 90 days.

Speaker 1 And then, of course, I go to weekly.

Speaker 1 And then?

Speaker 1 Start hiring and training. I mean, well, I need to build the structure.
Yeah, so you need to build

Speaker 1 systems. Like, what's the end structure look like? And what would it look like today? Who's going to wear what hats? Yep.
I'm good at that. So you're pretty good at building out SOPs?

Speaker 1 Not SOPs, structure. Okay, hats.
of it. So build structure.

Speaker 1 I can do SOPs. Yes, that's not a big deal.

Speaker 2 Okay. Are there zero list, but anything you're going to eliminate?

Speaker 1 Stop consulting.

Speaker 1 When are you going to stop consulting?

Speaker 1 Is that

Speaker 1 step two, step three, step four?

Speaker 1 Well, it's as soon as the house is sold, I guess. Okay.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 step two is sell house.

Speaker 1 So conversation to sell house. I'm gonna sell house.
And then sell house. Right.
Three would be stop consulting.

Speaker 1 Because I'll tell you what, one of the worst things that you could do right now is go sell the house, right?

Speaker 1 Like have the hard conversation, sell the house, and you're like, I'm going to hold on to this precious little client over here. No, no, no, no, right.

Speaker 1 Well, and the challenge is this too, though, and you brought it up, is that

Speaker 1 some of them need some prep. So I have a deal right now that they could sell for four or five million, except they're not doing the, like they don't have SOPs in their restaurant group.

Speaker 1 They have family tied into jobs that, you know, no, no, no, we need to professionalize some things.

Speaker 1 So the challenge is like, that's partly why I want to do a video series, because I want to be able to walk people through, here are the steps to get your business ready to sell.

Speaker 1 Because a lot of them, you know,

Speaker 1 someone starts their own restaurant and all of a sudden people buy their food and then they they sell more of it, and then they hire more people, and then they do another one and another one, but they don't ever professionalize.

Speaker 1 It's the other problem is it's harder to sell. So, I would like to, at some point, I need to, I would like to provide that.
So, don't have to do that.

Speaker 1 I want the consulting to be in a video format so I can. So, build course somewhere along the line.
Build a course needs to be

Speaker 1 line. So,

Speaker 1 can I give you a couple just cautions there? Yes.

Speaker 1 So, it's going to be it's going to be a temptation to want to build that course because there's value in it, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah, but I think it's a

Speaker 1 longer-term thing.

Speaker 1 It is a very long-term, and I would say, I'm not going to say don't do it, but make sure that isn't, like, your sweet spot is going to be in front of customers, closing deals, right?

Speaker 1 Like, that needs to be 80% of your time, and then this other 20% of the time doing these longer-term things that are going to play the long.

Speaker 1 Where would you fit in, like, building a personal brand?

Speaker 1 Let me add to that.

Speaker 1 So anything that you think of when building a course, like if you're like, these are all the steps that you would take to get your restaurant ready for business, I would carve that out and then record the content and just post it for free on social media.

Speaker 1 That's good to start doing.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Because

Speaker 1 Alex Mosey is a great example. I also think of Ryan, what's his face? The real estate guy.

Speaker 1 Sir Hant. Oh, Sir Hant.
Sir Hant, like you kind of look like him anyways.

Speaker 1 But what he did is he positioned himself on social media as like this real estate guy and now he gets deals because people just know him as the real estate guy even if maybe he's not the best real estate person in the world so whatever you think of like the three things you need to do to fix your financial disarray or you know whatever that is for you that is in your brain just post it to Instagram and TikTok and YouTube for free.

Speaker 1 Yeah, my whole thought was to my thought was to, I heard this somewhere in, I don't know, some Spotify something, and they were saying, hey, just do a five-minute, maybe, this would work for me.

Speaker 1 Five-minute video once a week, send it to the Philippines, have someone cut it into audio and this and that, and this and that, post and this and that, and then it's done.

Speaker 1 And a simple framework to do it is like you're talking about getting your kids involved. Like, I would explain restaurant business to your kids so they can understand it.
And, like, boom, like

Speaker 1 oversimplifying it to your customer base is how you'll build value. Like, and so, like, that could be a video right there is explaining to your kids,

Speaker 1 you know, whatever and side by side. Absolutely.
And so when I say 80-20, I mean like consistently 80-20, right? Just making sure that 80% of your time is revenue generating activities, right?

Speaker 1 Like things that are going to bring dollars in. The other 20, play the long game, the personal brand, the course, the different things, right? Like

Speaker 1 and don't overcomplicate it either, right? Like just, I mean,

Speaker 1 it doesn't have to be even professional cut. You literally can just hold your phone, shoot a video, drop it in social, upload it to Spotify, right? Like it, it and because at this point,

Speaker 1 initially, it's just practice. And if you start getting followers, great.
And you can just improve it a little bit ahead of time.

Speaker 1 And but more importantly than anything, it's just that you're consistently doing it.

Speaker 1 The opportunity cost of you, because what happens is a lot of people in your position when it comes to like building a personal brand is they'll wait for content to be perfect and they'll they'll do the Philippines route.

Speaker 1 They'll do all this. They'll get the nice camera and and stuff, and I'll wait till it's perfect.
But the opportunity cost of you not doing it all far outweighs waiting till it's perfect.

Speaker 1 Like Chris was saying,

Speaker 1 some of my most viral videos were me just with my phone with very little cuts. And so, like, honestly, it's more transparent that way, and people enjoy it more.

Speaker 1 So, anyways, consistency far outweighs perfection when it comes to personal brand. All right.

Speaker 1 So, so we got these, these aren't numbered correctly, but so we got game plan, we got conversation for selling the house, sell the house, stop consulting, build out a five-year plan, build out structure processes.

Speaker 1 I would probably say in here, hire team,

Speaker 1 and then build, boop, woo, boo, can't spell here.

Speaker 1 I dropped out of college. We're chilling.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 build a course and brand. So I think, man, you go and run this,

Speaker 1 this right here. Yeah.
This is going to be be a life changer. You committed?

Speaker 1 Of course. Yeah.

Speaker 2 We need you to commit so we can talk to you in a year when you're making a million bucks a month.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Then I'll fly into Pasco instead of Seattle. Let's go.

Speaker 1 Let's go.

Speaker 1 All right, guys, we appreciate you jumping on for this episode of Next Level Pros.

Speaker 1 Remember, no matter where you're at, in the level of success, success is not determined by a destination, but a trajectory.

Speaker 1 There is always a next level, whether it's in your relationships, your spirituality, your economic, your physique. There's always ways to improve.
Let's take it up to the next level. Until next time.